not sure that most Americans realize the chaos and calamitycaused by imbibing.

from motor vehicle accidents to hospital emergency visits,to domestic violence, unprotected sex, senseless fightsand a myriad of social problems, booze is underestimatedas a major cause of many problems in society.

part of the problem, of course, is the legality and socialacceptance of drinking.

in this age of awareness, we are exposed to the daily consequences of the effects of drinking to excess.

Monday, December 28, 2009

If you want something you've never had, you've got to do something you've never done! - Tangela

We worry about what a child will be tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today. - Stacia Tauscher

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph. - Shirley Temple

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. - Margaret Thatcher

Success has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others. - Danny Thomas

I hate women because they always know where things are. - James Thurber

If you do nothing else this year...Evolve. - Lily Tomlin

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation. - Brian Tracy

Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. - Chuang Tzu

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

8) We make a list of people we have harmed and people who have harmed us, and take steps to clear out negative energy by making amends and sharing our grievances in a respectful way.

11) We promptly admit to mistakes and make amends when appropriate, but we do not say we are sorry for things we have not done and we do not cover up, analyze, or take responsibility for the shortcomings of others.

These are essential for anyone seekingprogressive wellness, especially women.

Many females have been victims of abusein numerous forms; verbal, emotional,physical and sexual.

sadly we are not encouraged ANYWHEREin the big book or 12 steps, to safelyaddress those who have wronged US.

part of the healing process begins withadmitting wrongs, but it remains incompleteuntil we are able to share our feelings withthose who have harmed us.

I am reminded of this by the versefrom the Skylarksong from the '70's-"Wildflower"...

"Be careful how you touch her, for she'll awakenand sleep's the only freedom that she knowsand when you walk into her eyes, you won't believe

the way she's always payingfor a debt she never owesand a silent wind still blowsthat only she can hear and so she goes"

Monday, December 21, 2009

"If you sign up for therapy, there is an option to cut down or quit altogether and your therapist works with you to find out the right solution. You may start off by wishing to cut down and end up quitting. Similarly, you may feel you want to quit but then wish to try to moderate your drinking. Each person is different and you and your therapist arrive at a solution that’s best for you."

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you. - Yoda

The greatness of a man can nearly always be measured by his willingness to be kind. - G. Young

Such is human psychology that if we don't express our joy, we soon cease to feel it. - Lin Yü-tang

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. - Denis Waitley

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. - William Arthur Ward

The further one grows spiritually, the more and more people one loves and the fewer and fewer people one likes. - Gale Webbe

To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity. - Edward Weeks

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow. - H. G. Wells

When women go wrong, men go right after them. - Mae West

None are so empty as those who are full of themselves. - Benjamin Whichcote

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today. - William Allen White

The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he's a baby. - Natalie Wood

Saturday, December 19, 2009

this is my all-time favorite list of what you did not and will
not learn in school It was written by Charles J. Sykes, best known as the author of "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves, but Can’t Read, Write, or Add."

the emphasis has shifted from teaching the basics,

to sappy, feel good coddling and political correctness.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2
: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect
you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You
won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule
5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had
a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, ‘learn from them’..

Rule
7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are
now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes
and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So
before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s
generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule
8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS
NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll
give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This
doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off
and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do
that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

United States Changes Its Mind on Addiction - It's Not a Chronic Brain Disease After All

Nora Volkow and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) insist, based on peering at MRIs, that addiction is a chronic brain disease. You know - you saw it on HBO, and your kids learn this in school.

But, as I point out to Nora, she's looking in the wrong place. If you examine actual human lives, addiction is an interaction between people and their worlds that changes with time.

Now the NIDA's sister organization - the NIAAA or National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (remember, Joe Biden wants to change the names of both organizations because he knows addiction is a disease) - agrees with me.

According to Dr. Mark Willenbring, director of treatment and recovery research at NIAAA, "We're on the cusp of some major advances in how we conceptualize alcoholism."

This discovery, which I have described for decades , is based on the most sophisticated study yet conducted of Americans' drinking histories. Called NESARC (National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions), the study questioned a random national sample of over 43,000 Americans about their lifetime and current drinking.

Of this group, almost 4,500 had been alcohol dependent (read alcoholic) at one point in their lives. And, although 70% had never been treated or gone to Alcoholics Anonymous, most had ceased their alcoholism - even though most had not stopped drinking!

NESARC Past-Year Status of Alcoholics (columns percentaged)

Past Year Status

Treated (n=1,205)

Untreated (n=3,217)

Dependent

28

24

Abstinent

35

12

Drinking w/o dependence

36

64

Source: Dawson et al. (2005).

About 30% of Americans had experienced some kind of alcohol disorder, including abuse along with dependence, but about 70% of those quit drinking or cut back to safe consumption patterns without treatment after four years or less.

Only a tiny minority (1%) fit the stereotypical image of someone with severe, recurring alcohol addiction that Alcoholics Anonymous, addiction disease proponents like Volkow, and American mythology consider typical. According to Willenbring, "It can be a chronic, relapsing disease. But it isn't usually that."

Take that, Nora!

According to the lead researcher on the project, Deborah Dawson, NESARC data show that alcohol use disorders are "less a mental disorder than a maladaptive pattern of behavior."

In a three-year follow-up of initial respondents, Dawson and her colleagues found that alcohol dependence was "strongly associated with changes in mental/psychological functioning." Alcohol dependence causes significant decreases in mental health and coping, but social functioning and mental health underwent "significant increases among those who achieved full and partial remission from dependence" (meaning alcoholics who continued drinking with either no, or reduced, problems).

Now comes the most amazing part. The increases in social functioning and mental health "were equally great for abstinent and nonabstinent remission from dependence, but improvements in bodily pain and general health were associated with nonabstinent remission only" (that means the alcoholics who reduced their drinking).

My Life Process Program is exclusively abstinence based - although we recognize the reality that lifetime abstinence rarely occurs. But government researchers - based on the best epidemiological research yet conducted - now inform us that people who recover without quitting drinking are healthier than those who quit altogether.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Drunk Drivers with Kids in Car Could Face Felonies in N.Y.November 19, 2009

The New York state Assembly has passed a bill that would make it a felony offense to drive while intoxicated if children under age 16 are in the vehicle, the New York Times reported Nov. 18.

The bill also would require first-time convicted drunk drivers to install ignition-interlock devices on their cars to prevent repeat offenses.

Currently, only Arizona makes it a felony offense to drive drunk with children; about a dozen states require the ignition-interlock devices, which prevent the engine from starting if a breath sample reveals the presence of alcohol. New Yorkers convicted of felony drunk driving would face up to four years in prison under the bill.

The legislation follows a pair of impaired-driving cases in New York that caused the deaths of young children, including a crash on the Taconic Parkway that killed eight people and an incident where a drunk woman flipped her car on the Henry Hudson Parkway, killing Leandra Rosado, an 11-year-old friend of her daughter.

"Everyone who takes a drink and gets behind the wheel is going to think twice about driving whether there are children in the car," said Lenny Rosado, the victim's father. "My daughter's name and her death will make a difference."

Saturday, November 14, 2009

1) We affirm we have the power to take charge of our lives and stop being dependent on substances or other people for our self-esteem and security.

Alternative: We admit/acknowledge we are out of control with/powerless over ________ yet have the power to take charge of our lives and stop being dependent on substances or other people for our self-esteem and security.

2) We come to believe that God/Goddess/Universe/Great Spirit/Higher Power awakens the healing wisdom within us when we open ourselves to the power.

3) We make a decision to become our authentic selves and trust in the healing power of the truth.

4) We examine our beliefs, addictions and dependent behavior in the context of living in a hierarchical, patriarchal culture.

5) We share with another person and the Universe all those things inside of us for which we feel shame and guilt.

6) We affirm and enjoy our intelligence, strengths and creativity, remembering not to hide these qualities from ourselves and others.

7) We become willing to let go of shame, guilt, and any behavior that keeps us from loving ourselves and others.

8) We make a list of people we have harmed and people who have harmed us, and take steps to clear out negative energy by making amends and sharing our grievances in a respectful way.

9) We express love and gratitude to others and increasingly appreciate the wonder of life and the blessings we do have.

10) We learn to trust our reality and daily affirm that we see what we see, we know what we know and we feel what we feel.

11) We promptly admit to mistakes and make amends when appropriate, but we do not say we are sorry for things we have not done and we do not cover up, analyze, or take responsibility for the shortcomings of others.

12) We seek out situations, jobs, and people who affirm our intelligence, perceptions and self-worth and avoid situations or people who are hurtful, harmful, or demeaning to us.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

When you decide to enter a professional alcohol and drug treatment program, you will begin a journey through four distinct stages of rehab recovery as you learn to develop a clean and sober lifestyle.

The four stages of rehab described here - treatment initiation, early abstinence, maintaining abstinence and advanced recovery - were developed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse for its "Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research Based Guide" resource for healthcare providers.

In this model, recovery is a lifelong process.

1) When you reach out for help from a professional alcohol and drug rehab program, you begin the first stage of your recovery, treatment initiation. Whether you seek help voluntarily or are forced by circumstances to enter rehab, your recovery process will begin with you initiating professional treatment.

2)Once you have made a commitment to continue treatment for your substance abuse problem, you will enter the second stage of rehab known as early abstinence. This can be the toughest stage to cope with because of many factors, including continued withdrawal symptoms, physical cravings, psychological dependence and a host of triggers that can tempt you into a relapse.

3)After approximately 90 days of continual abstinence, you will move from the early abstinence stage of recovery to the third stage, maintaining abstinence. If you started in a residential treatment program, you will now move to the continuing or follow-up counseling phase of your rehab program on an outpatient basis.

One focus of this stage of rehab is obviously to maintain abstinence by avoiding a relapse. You will learn the warning signs and the steps that can lead up to a relapse.

4)The fourth stage of alcohol and drug rehab is reaching advanced recovery in which you have achieved long-lasting abstinence and have made a commitment to continue to lead a lifelong sober lifestyle. Advanced recovery, sometimes called stable recovery, usually begins after five years of sustained abstinence.

Throughout your continuing care phase of your professional rehab program, you have not only learned to maintain abstinence, you have also learned to make more healthy and productive choices in all areas of your life. Advanced recovery is living that healthy lifestyle for the rest of your life.

Monday, November 9, 2009

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. - Joseph Campbell

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it. - Jack Canfield

You really have to look inside and find your inner strength, and say, "I'm proud of what I am and who I am, and I'm just going to be myself." - Mariah Carey

How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. - George Washington Carver

The capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest meaning and significance. - Pablo Casals

Every winner has scars. - Herbert N. Casson

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. - Willa Cather

Star The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed. - Nicolas Chamfort

If you're still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on its grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today. - Joyce Chapman

Friday, November 6, 2009

This was the topic at last nights house meeting.
we are all familiar with the serenity prayer,
yet everyone has their own view of what
the feeling actually consists of.

In essence it is the exact opposite of the chaos,
insecurity and agitation of our former days.

What comes to mind for me is the Eagles song,
"peaceful easy feeling";
I like the way your sparkling earrings lay,
against your skin, it's so brown
and I wanna sleep with you
in the desert tonight
with a billion stars all around
'cause I gotta peaceful easy feeling
and I know you won't let me down
'cause I'm already standing on the
ground
And I found out a long time ago
what a woman can do to your soul
Ah, but she can't take you anyway
You don't already know how to go
and I gotta peaceful, easy feeling
and I know you won't let me down
'cause I'm already standing on the ground
I get this feeling I may know you
as a lover and a friend
but this voice keeps whispering
in my other ear, tells me
I may never see you again
'cause I get a peaceful, easy feeling
and I know you won't let me down
'cause I'm already standing on the ground
'cause I'm already standing...
on the ground

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Soon a common topic in the rooms willbe the upcoming terror trilogy of holidays

Thanksgiving is commonly the easiestto handle for most alcoholicsNot known for raucous celebration and ceremonialtoasts, the day we give thanks centers mainly around foodThough I do admit I did look forward to a goodwine with dinner , the main focus was usually on the next course.

Next up is Christmas, complete with work parties,stressful shopping, decorating and for some,dread of certain family members.Many of us remember the constant availability ofspiked eggnog, aperitifs, and jazzy coffees,along with the usual beer, wine and cocktails.

Having never been a fan of New Year's Eve;which I always considered an amateur night,it has been the easiest to handle in sobriety.

The best advice is to stay vigilant, talk about it, and maybe hit a meeting. accept that others can still drink safely.It is comforting to know that we can be presentenjoy holiday festivities.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Where is home? Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness. Home is where the heart's tears can dry at their own pace. - Vernon Baker

Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm not afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't. - Lucille Ball

Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine. - Honore De Balzac

A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love. - Basil

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. - Melody Beattie

We all are born mad. Some remain so. - Samuel Beckett

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose. - Hada Bejar

Listening to your heart is not simple. Finding out who you are is not simple. It takes a lot of hard work and courage to get to know who you are and what you want. - Sue Bender

Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up. - Walter Benjamin

You stand outside the circle and wonder why you feel left out, unaware that you need your own permission to join the others - not theirs. - Rusty Berkus

Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting. - Elizabeth Bibesco

There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude... a quiet joy. - Ralph H. Blum

We are co-creators with God, not puppets on a string waiting for something to happen. - Father Leo Booth

Sunday, October 25, 2009

"Decision and determination are the engineer and fireman of our train to opportunity and success."Burt Lawlor

"Choice, not circumstances, determines your success."Anonymous

You cannot solve a problem until you acknowledge that you have one and accept responsibility for solving it.Zig Ziglar

Always give without remembering and always receive without forgetting.Brian Tracy

"You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, 'I release the need for this in my life'." Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." Helen Keller

"You have to find happiness in yourself before you can find it with someone."Anonymous

"There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and nothing so gentle as strength." Leo Muir

"If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results."Jack Dixon

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."Siddartha Guatama Buddha

Friday, October 23, 2009

"The inner voice of the alcoholic is a running monologue of excuses, a compendium of denial, a master of deception. I just have to get through this rough patch in my marriage. It's a tough time at work, with all these deadlines approaching. My kids are driving me crazy. Oh, I'll just have a little sip...wouldn't get a fly high."